Periodic table of elements has changed — back to school

The periodic table of elements family just got a little bigger, adding two obscure, short-lived bundles of joy.

For now, they’re affectionately dubbed elements 114 and 116 — the number of protons in their nuclei.

These aren’t elements you’ll run into in your average lab class; scientists make elements 114 and 116 by smashing atoms together.

Even then, they disintegrate quickly. Atoms of 114 exist for just a few seconds, and 116 disintegrates in less than a second.

Nevertheless, they’ve totally undermined all that painstaking memorization you did in your high school chemistry class.

The elements were recently approved by an international group of chemists and physicists. The Associated Press reports that when named, the new elements will likely end with “ium,” like calcium, plutonium or curium.

Don’t get too used to the period table the way it is now. The almighty international committee is set to deliberate on elements 113 and 115 some time soon.

And the Associated Press reports the table of elements changes every few years.

That’s troubling to some, Ken Moody of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told the AP. The chemist, part of the discovery team for the new elements, said he doesn’t talk about what he does for a living at parties “because people don’t generally invite you back.”